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India: How has the Gujarat massacre affected minority women?

Source:

Citizen’s Initiative, Ahmedabad [India]

The survivors speak.

A six-member team of women from Delhi, Bangalore, Tamil Nadu and Ahmedabad undertook a five-day fact-finding mission from March 27 — March 31, 2002, to assess the impact of the continuing violence on minority women in Gujarat. Other fact-finding teams have also visited Gujarat post-Godhra. However, given the particular targeting of women in this carnage, there was an urgent need for a sectoral investigation into how women in particular have been affected. The objective of the fact-finding was to determine the nature and extent of the crimes against women; find evidence of the role played by the police and other state institutions in protecting women; determine ‘new elements’ in the current spate of violence that distinguish it from previous rounds of communal violence in Gujarat; determine the role of organisations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal in both - the build-up to the current carnage as well as in actually unleashing the violence.